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Question:

I think you exaggerate the damage caused by looking at women, whether on the street, or on the Internet. I consider myself a God-fearing Jew who keeps all of the mitzvoth, and I don't feel that looking at a pretty woman now and then, and enjoying the beauty that God created, is a sin that interferes in my worship of God.

Answer:

One should know that the principle aspect of a Jew's holiness and purity is in sanctifying his eyes. The Torah emphasizes this in the verse regarding Yehuda by asking, "Where is the k'deisha?" While the word k'deisha has the meaning "harlot," it can also be read in its meaning of "holiness," so that we read, "Where is the holiness?" And the answer is "b'Anayim," which means that the harlot was in the place called Anayim, but also that the holiness of a Jew is in the Anayim - the eyes (Bereshit, 38:21).

Vision possesses such lofty importance because the eyes are the windows to the "soul of the soul." A blemish to the sense of vision, when the eyes gaze upon some forbidden image, is grave indeed, as stressed by the verse in the Book of Eichah, "My eye affects my soul because of all the daughters of the city" (Eichah, 3:51). This means that what a man sees can cause him to lose a portion of his holiness.

The instant a man gazes at something improper, immediately a sexual fantasy is triggered in his mind, causing drops of holy seed to be uprooted from their place in his brain and to be jettisoned outside where they are lost and captured by the realm of the klipot [shells of impurity]. Here, they are doomed to remain in captivity until the erring man repents with a true atonement by rectifying the Yesod which he damaged.